Last night, history of a sort was made when excerps of "Fitna," Geert Wilders short film linking exhortations to violence against infidels in the Koran to examples violence against infidels in real life, aired on The Glenn Beck Show. I say "history," of course, because until last night, no television network in the world had dared to air the film--to my knowledge, comprised solely of news and documentary footage--due to fear of violent retribution from those we generically refer to as "terrorists." Indeed, last March when Dutch parliamentarian Wilders released the film on the Internet, the Internet server initially pulled it offline after receiving death threats from the same kind of "terrorists."

So, kudos to Glenn Beck and CNN for displaying a sadly unique brand of courage.

Beck's interview with Wilders went well enough, given that Wilders was allowed to describe in frank terms the dire conditions of Islamization in Holland and the wider West. After the interview concluded and the show resumed...

Dear Diana,
Thank you, once again, for reporting all of this Orwellian madness to your readers (one of whom would be me).
Let's see, now. The inmates are running the asylum:
1) The love-in Kumbaya Marxists in Europe violently protect the Muslims from non-Muslim men and women who are trying to save their continent via peaceful assembly. The cops stand and watch as they who wish to peacefully assemble are brutally beaten by the Marxists. Check.
2) Millions within the United States receive a free DVD, hand-delivered onto their doorsteps. The DVD, which has been in existence since 2005, previously aired on FoxNews and CNN. It is designed to provide a free factual basic education in "Islam 101". Major news outlets throughout America and various political venues, including CAIR, decry the...

In many ways, this is the most sharply revealing photograph to emerge from the debacle in Cologne last weekend when leftists, much to the shameful approval of the local authorities including the mayor, seized control of the streets and prevented a political demonstration against Islamization from taking place. The photo was taken by "Aviel," whose eyewitness account is posted at Gates of Vienna. He says it "shows a band of some sort of humans preventing the police from moving about. I find it odd that even they were powerless to deal with that lot. However, I think that they were probably just unwilling."

These policemen, mere instruments of a corrupted state, were not just "unwilling"...

Writing at Brussels Journal, Thomas Landen cites an interesting case against the (mis)reported massiveness of the numbers of counter-demonstrators who shut down the anti-islamization rally in Cologne last weekend. In the run-up to the event, initial reports said police were expecting 40,000 such counter-demonstrators. (I cited that figure in my column last week.) Far fewer actually seem to have turned up--somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000, according to German news sources.

Landen quotes a Norwegian correspondent who writes:

Some counterdemonstrators tried to gather beside the Cologne Cathedral, which in many ways represents the core of the struggle. The Muslims of Cologne want to build a giant mosque with a dome and two minarets. Most of the Cologne citizens oppose this, but the project is supported by most of the politicians and it is embraced in the name of multiculturalism....

Just read a London TimesOnline report stating "Two members of the British National Party were also in town [Cologne], including Richard Barnbrook, its sole member of the London Assembly." They were not, it so happens, invited to the conference.

But as I discussed here regarding initial misreports that Le Pen would be speaking at the Cologne event, the BNP's presence or non-presence "in town" changes nothing about the merits or importance of the anti-Islamization cause (or the disgrace of Cologne's descent into mob rule) just as, to take an extreme but concrete example, Stalin's presence in the Allied camp changed nothing about the merits or importance of the anti-Nazi cause. This is not to compare the BNP to Stalin, who, after all, was responsible for killing millions of people before he became an ally of the US and GB.

Photo: Cologne Mayor Fritz Schramma. He called the mob rule of his city that led police to shut down a political rally against Islamization this weekend "a victory for the city of Cologne and a victory by the democratic forces in this city."

Here's a morning-after appraisal in Der Spiegel of how wonderful it really was that rioters in Cologne were able to prevent the anti-Islamization rally from taking place last weekend.

It opens this way:

When radical-right activists from around Europe arrived in Cologne on Saturday for a rally, the city was ready. Thousands of protesters flooded the rally site, disrupted city transportation and even attacked a river boat where a press conference was supposed to be held.

Notice how the city being "ready" equates with thousands of protestors disrupting city transportation, flooding the rally site, attacking a river...

Translation: The new fascism does not say: “I am fascism.” It says: “I am anti-fascism.” (Ignazio Silone — Socialist). This is from Gates of Vienna--which has new eyewitness accounts about the Cologne debacle.

Meanwhile, back in Iran, the Iranian foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador to express "deep concern over EU's lenient behavior toward anti-Islamic sentiments in Europe." This, of course, after a mayor-approved mob shut down the anti-Islamization political rally in Cologne.

From CNSNews.com a nod to the US government's financial guarantees and social engineering that together seem to have triggered sub-prime meltdown:

....But lack of oversight is hardly the problem, Richman said, because “the financial industry is regulated all over the place.” In Richman’s analysis, it is precisely the government guarantee of Fannie and Freddie that is “short-circuiting” the market.”
That guarantee “removes market discipline,” emboldens banks to make bad loans, and encourages Fannie and Freddie to back them. This, Richman asserted, is a “moral hazard.”
“It’s like if I invite you to Vegas and say the winnings are all yours and I’ll cover your losses,” Richman said. “You’re going to have a great old time. On the other [hand], if you go by yourself and you know you’ve got to cover your losses, you’re going to behave differently, and that’s been the problem.”...

I know, I know--it's the economy, stupid. But I can't take my eyes off the grisly, tragic trainwreck no one wants to notice going on in Europe. Here, thanks again to Gates of Vienna--which has been surpassing all blog expectations in bringing news that goes unreported in the media from Europe this week--is the parliamentary address of Geert Wilders that the Dutch government media pulled the plug on.
Speech by Geert Wilders during the Parliamentary session
Translated by VH
Wednesday 17 September 2008
Madam President, today we discuss the budget, the budget for 2009, a humbug budget from the worst government ever. But today we also discuss the current state of our country. And whoever takes a close look at that has no reason to be cheerful. What I blame this government the most of is the damage it causes to our society. The Netherlands is no longer the Netherlands we have grown up in. There is also no longer...

Armin Laschet, minister for minorities (at $300,000 per year, according to his Wikipedia entry) in North Rhine-Westphalia state, who is also a Christian-Democrat was described as jubilant yesterday over the successful takeover of Cologne by mobs who prevented an anti-Islamization political rally from taking place. It was the first time, he said, an entire German city “stood up to protect its Muslims.”

A reader writes in this morning: Oh, my God. Protect them from what? Freedom of speech?

Today, 5,000 left-wing demonstrators – self-proclaimed “anti-fascists” – prevented a peaceful gathering on Heumarkt in downtown Cologne of opponents of the Islamisation of Europe. The gathering had been planned by Pro Cologne, a conservative political party which is opposing the building of a giant mosque in the city, the fourth largest town in Germany. The mosque is to have a dome 37 meters high and two minaret stretching up 55 meters. It is being built by the Cologne branch of the department of religious affairs of Turkey, which reports directly to the Prime Minister of Turkey.

Pro Cologne had invited politicians from other European parties that oppose Islamization – namely Filip Dewinter, a leader of the Flemish Vlaams Belang party, Andreas Mölzer,...

Gates of Vienna posts initial reports out of Europe regarding the anarchy surrounding the anti-Islamization event going on in Cologne, Germany this weekend. Background by me here and here.

Update: More information here and here.

(Meanwhile, back in the Dutch parliament....)

Double update: Looks as if the anti-Islamization event is already over before it began as thousands of counter-protestors successfully shut down Saturday's political rally after German police balked at enforcing freedom to assemble and speak. Details remain sketchy but it's already quite clear who won the day: Iran, which had demanded the EU outlaw the event in the first place. From one press report today:

The DC Examiner reports (via The Corner) that the Department of Homeland Security has joined forces with Sesame Street. That must make the government entity into the Department of Homeland Security Blanket. Yes, I know it's for kids, but remember the US Government ban on words related to Islam and jihad? Look how very well the government is coping.

From a new booklet on "emergencies."

“I, your furry, blue friend Grover, have a story to share. Are you wondering what it is about? I will give you an itty-bitty hint: It is about getting ready for emergencies! Oh boy, that was a big hint. Do you want to get ready, too? You do? Oh, I am so pleased. Then read this story with me, and let us get ready together!”

It has long struck me that the sub-mortgage meltdown is just another manifestation of "the death of the grown-up" in our time. Remember when bankers were the very caricature of sober-suited caution, reliability and all-around straight-and-narrow business sense? If it wasn't a sure thing, it wouldn't fly.

Not too long ago, I watched The Best Years of Our Lives (pictured above), which chronicles the post-war readjustment period of three returning WWII vets, and noted the scene in which back-to-banking Frederick March (on the right) decides to take a maverick's chance on a loan to an ex-GI with no collateral, much to the agitation of the bank president. In our subprime crisis, such white-knuckle banking has been practically the norm. And why not? We are all creatures of our time. In the absence of adults, how could Wall Street not fall victim to the childlike cult of instant gratification?...

Now that sharia in Britain is official--the death knells, sorry, news reports came out earlier this week--let's see how it's working.

From the Times Online:
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men.
Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.
The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.
In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the...

From the Daily Times of Pakistan (via Jeffrey Imm): The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will be presenting a resolution banning caricatures at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly.

That would be at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, right? Question: When are we going to laugh these people out of town?

“The resolution will demand legislation against the publication of blasphemous caricatures of revered personalities--

Hmmm. Anyone I know?

--and derogatory remarks against religions. It will also demand [sacrilegious] actions be declared a crime,” OIC Secretary General’s Special Representative on Kashmir Ezzat Kamel Mufti told a news conference.
Mufti said a particular group in America and the European Union had been launching attacks against Islam. “However, we should not get emotional and resort...

The Democratic presidential nominee has never tried to hide the fact he delivers speeches off the device, though normally he doesn't use one at standard campaign rallies and town hall events.

But the Illinois senator used a teleprompter at both his Colorado events Monday — making for a particularly peculiar scene in Pueblo, where the prompter was set up in the middle of what is normally a rodeo ring.

Last month, several readers of my column in Arizona wrote to tell me that their local paper had announced it was thinking about dropping my syndicated column (which appears in about 130-plus other papers across the country). I am very happy and most grateful to report that the community of Sierra Vista responded with sufficient enthusiasm to convince editors to keep running my column every Tuesday. Thank you to all who gave me a vote of confidence. I've never heard of a newspaper throwing open such a decision to its readership, but I can tell you that I overwhelmed by this response.

John Le Carre, The London Sunday Times, breathlessly informs (via CNSNews.com), almost defected to the Soviet Union. The reporter--extremely impressed by this best-selling chronicler of moral equivalence between the US and the USSR during the Cold War sitting before him, "...clutching his glass of calvados as the last suspicion of sunlight dissolves in the sea, an easy dying of the light..." and all that--writes:

“You were genuinely tempted?” I ask him, in some surprise.
“Yes, there was a time when I was, yes,” he says.
“For ideological reasons, like the rest of them - Blunt, Philby, Maclean?”
Le Carré is considered to be on the left these days, of course - a consensus arrived at largely through his visceral dislike of recent US foreign policy. One of that coterie...

AN Afghan court has sentenced an ex-journalist and a mullah to 20 years in prison each for publishing a translation of the Koran alleged to contain errors, friends and media rights groups said today.
Afghan and international media rights organisations condemned the sentences handed down yesterday and called on President Hamid Karzai to intervene.
Former journalist Ahmed Ghous Zalmai was arrested in November trying to escape into Pakistan as religious clerics and parliament were in an uproar about a Dari-language version of the Muslim holy book he had published.
Mullah Qari Mushtaq, who was sentenced with him, had approved the version which other clerics and parliamentarians claimed contained errors and misunderstandings about issues such as homosexuality and adultery.
Critics also complained the book did not include the original Arabic text as required by Islamic law....

Photo: Belgian police arresting Filip Dewinter at a 2007 Brussels rally marking the 9/11 attacks on the US and protesting the Islamization of Europe.

On September 20, a European group called Cities Against Islamisation is sponsoring a demonstration called "No to Islamisation" in Cologne/Koln, Germany. Although the demonstration has been planned for some time, just last month the city council there approved controversial plans to construct a mega-mosque and surrounding Islamic complex in this ancient city famed for its skyline dominated for centuries by the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. The speakers at next Saturday's demonstration, according to the Cities Against Islamisation website, will be:
Henry Nitzsche, member of the German Parliament (Deutsche Bundestag)
Filip Dewinter, group leader of Vlaams Belang in the Flemish Parliament
Markus Beisicht, president of the German Movement...

As I mentioned in yesterday's 9/11 column (sharply titled by my excellent syndicate editor "A Day That Will Live in ... Islamic Accomodation"), the demonstration in downtown Brussels held by the Flemish separatist party Vlaams Belang both to mark 9/11/08 and to protest the Islamization of Europe was broken up by Belgian police--and, according to one participant who emailed me yesterday, it was broken up before the group could finish laying flowers at the base of the World Trade Center there.

How's that for efficient police work?

The mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, had denied Vlaams Belang a permit for the demonstration for several reasons as reported in the Belgian press: the event would be too "sensitive"; the event would be taking place too close to "sensitive" neighborhoods; and it would be taking place during the presumably sensitive span of Ramadan.

"Sensitive"? Let's snip away the euphemistic grape leaf. The mayor was referring to a potential Muslim reaction in Brussels,...

Somber, indeed. Good piece. Get ready, though, because this may make you vomit: NYC had a citywide singalong at 2:00 pm at which appointed hour you were supposed to go outside and sing “Let It Be” on the sidewalk (no, I’m not kidding) with people from your building so that the entire city would be unified in song.

I just filed my 9/11 X 7 column, an exercise that fully revealed to me--and I hope, of course, to readers--the extent to which our commemorations increasingly suit a natural disaster that's come and gone rather than a jihadist act of ongoing war. More on that later.

For now, here's a story out of Israel dated 9/11 as well. It's all about how the US has so far not only refused to send "bunker busters" to Israel for fear of Israel actually using them to destroy Iran's nuclear program, but has also denied Israel flyover use of Iraqi airspace.

Who'd a thunk it seven years ago?

From Haaretz:

The security aid package the United States has refused to give Israel for the past few months out of concern that Israel would use it to attack nuclear facilities in Iran included a large number of "bunker-buster" bombs, permission to use an air corridor to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes.
Officials...

Remember Mazen Asbahi, the Muslim Brother-tied Muslim outreach director for the Obama campaign? The one who resigned after one story about him ran in the Wall Street Journal following reports about his MB affiliations surfaced on an MB-tracking website? I mentioned Asbahi in last week's column as a prime example of the kind of story the vast majority in the media incuriously and fantastically looks the other way on.

Well, Asbahi may have officially "resigned," but he sure seems to be working for the Obama campaign. According to this Investor's Business Daily story,...

At first, I thought this story out of the Netherlands about Iranian students bringing a discrimination suit against Dutch universities--which, in abiding by UN sanctions on Iran, are barring Iranians from classes related to nuclear weapons technology--was yet another a case study in how the liberty of the West is continually exploited by its enemies. I mean, imagine: Nuke-know-how-seeking-nationals from a nation openly avowed to destroy the the West are charging discrimination in a Western court on the grounds that they are being barred from nuke-know-how. The mind reels--or should. In a sane world, the judge would laugh them out of court. We'll have to wait and see if the Dutch hold the line here. Of course, if they do, the Iranians can always tranfer to ... MIT.

From the Radio Netherlands report:

[Iranian student spokesman] Behnam Taebi points out, however, that in recent months when he was doing research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - in the United States, the country most...

...Ramadan rules, or does it? While the verdict is still out, Robert Spencer puts culture clash at the meatpacking plant--which so far includes some violence at the plant and Muslim employees not coming to work (photo above)--into perspective here and here.

Seven years after 9/11 come Thursday, I don't think we really know what we, as a people, are all about. Are we still fighting "terrorism"? Are we still exporting democracy? What principles have we chucked over these years? What principles have held fast?

One principle that has clearly suffered over these years is that of freedom of speech. Our press may be perfectly gung-ho to press questions home about a vice presidential candidate's amniotic fluid, but they are loathe to discuss far more significant issues pertaining to matters of national security, even matters of national survival. Why? One terrible reason is the chilling effect of a nefarious practice called "libel tourism," whereby a litigious Saudi billionaire, for example, may take a US author, for example, to a British court, for example, over allegations about terror-financing, for instance, made in a US-published book, for...

If a star named Sarah Palin was born on Wednesday, that doesn't, alas, mean the galaxy is in alignment.Not by a long shot. Other news on Wednesday included a destabilizing effort by Iran to thwart the free assembly of Europeans in the German city of Koln (Cologne) to protest the Islamization of Europe. Reuters has the story: "Iran urges EU to stop 'anti-Islamic' meet in Germany."

Iran called on the French presidency of the European Union on Wednesday to prevent an "anti-Islamic congress" of right-wing groups from taking place in Germany later this month.

The official IRNA news agency said the French charge d'affaires in Tehran was summoned to the Foreign Ministry's human rights department over the Islamic Republic's concern about a "growth in anti-Islam".

"Specifically, Iran asked the rotating head of the EU to prevent the formation of an anti-Islamic congress in Cologne in Germany by making responsible decisions," IRNA...

Not that anyone expects US Weekly to uphold anything even faintly resembling standards, but this cover (hat tip John Batchelor) is a caricature of calumny. It's also nothing outside the journalistic norm of the past 48 hours. As such, it stands as the definitive statement by the Fourth Estate on the Palin nomination.

Of course, in one way, it's sort of nice to see the media working for a change--as opposed to the fatcat-lazy public relations campaign they've been orchestrating for Barack Obama since he emerged as Their One.

But this Babygate feeding-frenzy spotlights the disturbingly infantile turn of mind that marks the mainstream media, and mars their attempts to keep the public informed.

Your article a few days ago is right on. Our Marine son got back from Iraq duty a few months ago and when I asked him about his interaction with the Iraq people and what they thought of us, he said, "They want us out of there" and they do. We want to throw a shoe at the TV everytime we hear Bush/McCain/anyone talk about the democracy in Iraq. They are still in denial and ignorance on this issue. Iraq will not be the second (if Turkey is still the first) Islamic secular state as sharia law will control so no separation of church and state, and never any democracy.

I will leave you with this thought that dominates our local discussion among folks who know the issues: Whoever gets the political ring on Iraq the quicker will win in November....

Over at View from the Right, Lawrence Auster takes note of an intensifying political focus on Obama's inexperience vs. Palin's inexperience. His take:

The belief that Obama's lack of experience is his most vulnerable point reveals the stunning intellectual emptiness of the many conservatives who hold that belief. It shows an inability to oppose Obama based on the things that really matter: namely, who he is, what he stands for, what he would do as president. Very few people vote for president on the basis of the candidates' experience; they vote based on who they think would be the best person to lead the country. The Founding Fathers never spoke of number of years in office as a qualification for the presidency. They said, over and over, that the qualifications for the presidency were virtue and wisdom.

I asked my friend the retired-cop to take a look at the video of the arrest and give a professional assessment. Here's what he wrote:

For the police to legally take a physical action like this would require some sort of obstruction of the sidewalk, blocking other pedestrians from passing, or some sort of alarming physical or verbal harassment of other citizens (disorderly conduct is the catch-all phrase). I didn't see either of those situations here as the video cut into the action. I don't know what happened prior to the beginning of what we see on the video.
Now, as to the BCSO Deputy pushing the newsman across the street, I know that the officer will say that he saw that the newsman was in danger of being struck by traffic and pushed him across the street to "safety". Did he have to do that? I don't know if he was ordered to do it. I'm with the news man here on the press conducting business on a public sidewalk issue....

Muslim council chiefs ban ALL members from 'tea and sandwiches' in meetings during Ramadan

So reads the headline in the Evening Standard. I don't think the tea and sandwich ban will actually stand, but look at what passes for language of defiiance from Liberal Democrat leader Stephanie Eaton in the East London Advertiser:

“This sends out the wrong message to our community. Our community consists of a huge number of different religions, all of which should be valued, and no one religion should be accorded more status or influence than others.
“Freedom of belief is an important human right, and we Liberal Democrat councillors, Muslim and non-Muslim, agree that this request is inappropriate.”
She has also written to Town Hall bosses about her concerns that their...

In a matter of hours, a major national campaign had called on its legions to bully a radio show out of airing an interview with a legitimate scholar asking legitimate political questions. Coupled with the Obama campaign's recent attempts to sic the DOJ on the creators of a truthful political advertisement...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.
The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.
Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president.
He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised...